AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): SULPHUR NURSE — “ROOPKUND”

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Feb 232022
 

 

Sulphur Nurse is an international experimental noise/industrial trio consisting of Eeli Helin (Lung Knots, Fawn Limbs), Dan Dolby (Catafalque, Mastiff), and Matt Finney (Clawing, It Only Gets Worse). As you can see, the members have their own separate projects that pursue divergent paths. They brought their own influences and preferences into this project, and the tracks themselves present divergences, but something united these creative forces. What was it?

Listening to their debut album Roopkund (set for release by Tartarus Records on February 25th) suggests this unifying approach in their experimentation: Have nightmares, remember them, and then portray them with the most abrasive, dismal, dread-inspiring, and hallucinatory aesthetics possible. Continue reading »

BROOD OF HATRED – THE GOLDEN AGE

 Album Reviews  1 Response »
Feb 232022
 

(Andy Synn opens his mind to the new album by one-man Prog-Death prodigy Brood of Hatred)

So, let me think, what do I know about Tunisia?

Well, I know it’s the Northern-most country in Africa, and predominantly Muslim, and I’m pretty sure I went on holiday there once with my parents when I was a kid… but other than that I don’t really know too much about it.

I know even less about its Metal scene, which appears to be extremely small and extremely underground, to the extent that the only two bands I’m really familiar with – Vielikan and Omination – are primarily written and recorded by the same individual!

As it turns out, Brood of Hatred main-man Mohamed Mêlki was also a member of Vielikan at one point, but has since branched out to craft his own particular brand of engagingly immersive Prog-Death, with The Golden Age (set for release this Friday) being by some margin his best work yet.

Continue reading »

AN NCS EP PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): DARKNESS EVERYWHERE — “THE SEVENTH CIRCLE”

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Feb 222022
 

 

The Bay Area melodic death metal band Darkness Everywhere bring proven talent to the table, harnessing the skills of vocalist/guitarist/drummer Ben Murray (Light This City, Wilderness Dream), guitarist Cameron Stucky (Crepuscle), and renowned producer/engineer Zack Ohren on bass. What’s more, their debut EP also includes guest vocal performances by Laura Nichol (Light This City), John Henry (Darkest Hour), and Xavier from Upon Stone.

The band’s chosen name provides a clue to their vision, but the EP’s title, The Seventh Circle, is an even more vivid signal. There they point to Dante’s Seventh Layer Of Hell, where acts of violence in life are punished in death through endless torture and agony. Souls are immersed in rivers of boiling blood and fire, imprisoned in gnarled trees where harpies feed, and abandoned on scorching plains.

Darkness Everywhere take us to this hot and unhappy place through the paths of seven tracks, each of which has a fittingly hellish theme, and we’ll lead you through each of them ion our premiere of the EP today in advance of its release on February 25th. Continue reading »

AFTER LIFE: “GATES OF MADNESS”

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Feb 222022
 

 

(We present DGR‘s review of the second album by the death metal band After Life from the Basque Country of Spain, which was released on February 14th.)

It’s never easy to tell which direction the yearly handful of riff-landslide albums is going to come from. The annual tradition of finding said albums is fairly predictable at this point, and sometimes if the gods be kind then the harvest will be good and we’ll have four-to-five of them on our plates. But the areas from which they’ll come are less predictable and there’s always a chance to get blindsided.

In this case the album arrives courtesy of Spain, the group After Life, and their sophomore album Gates Of Madness. Arriving six years after their first release, Gates Of Madness moves with an extreme sense of urgency and rarely – if ever – lets up. Appearances can be deceiving because at first glance you might see the band and assume you know exactly what you’re in for, then about a minute and a half into the first song After Life completely change form into something that could see them drawing comparisons to high-speed riff monsters like Cytotoxin, Murder Made God, the sadly split-up Kronos, and weirdly enough…Meshuggah? Continue reading »

EIGHT BELLS: “LEGACY OF RUIN”

 Album Reviews, Exceptions to the Rule  2 Responses »
Feb 212022
 

 

(Our friend Justin Collins  is the author of the following review of the latest album by the Oregonian band Eight Bells, which is scheduled for release on February 25th by Prophecy Productions.)

It’s been a little while since we’ve been graced with an Eight Bells release. As is probably the case with many people, I’ve lost all sense of time because of the pandemic, but it’s been 6 years since they released Landless. Granted, life sometimes gets in the way. Injuries, lineup changes, and the need to make a living get in the way of artists who make music off the beaten path, but luckily Melynda Jackson, the constant of this group, has soldiered on to create Legacy of Ruin with two new band members, Matt Solis (Cormorant) on bass and vocals, and Brian Burke (Cave Dweller) on drums. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: KAMPFAR, SVRM, BÂ’A, SVARTSOT, THE SUN’S JOURNEY THROUGH THE NIGHT, SAQRARUNA, INTUS MORTEM, BEELZEJUD, ARCHVILE KING

 Album Reviews, SHADES OF BLACK, SHORT BUT SWEET  No Responses »
Feb 202022
 

 

My day job has left me alone this weekend so I decided to make hay while the sun shines. Yesterday’s round-up included the music of eight bands and this one includes the music of nine.

There is indeed quite a lot of music in this week’s black(ish) metal column, but even I haven’t heard all of it. The releases I haven’t heard in their entirety are included in Part 2 below, where I’ve revived the strategy I used in the old Miscellany columns (and if those don’t ring a bell I’ll explain when we get there).

PART ONE

KAMPFAR (Norway)

I’m beginning with “Lausdans Under Stjernene“, a new single released by Indie Recordings on February 16th by a band who are approaching their 30th anniversary but show no signs of slowing down or playing it safe. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: DEATH ON FIRE — “THE DYING LIGHT”

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Feb 182022
 

 

Following up on their excellent 2021 EP Six Foot Box (for which we happily hosted a premiere), the Indiana-based metal band Death On Fire are today releasing a new two-track vinyl single as a prelude to their forthcoming album Burial Hymns.

Both songs provide a vivid reminder of Death On Fire‘s viscerally potent but intriguing musical amalgams, which often include stylistic traits from death metal, thrash, the blues, hard rock, and more. What we have for you now, presented through a lyric video, is a premiere of the title track from the new release, “The Dying Light“. Continue reading »

THE DEVILS OF LOUDUN: “ESCAPING ETERNITY”

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Feb 172022
 

 

(We give you DGR‘s extensive review of a new album by The Devils of Loudun from the U.S. Pacific Northwest. It was released last Friday by The Artisan Era.)

This is stating the obvious but the first full-length from Seattle, Washington’s keyboard-heavy tech-death crew The Devils Of Loudun feels like it has been a long time coming. The group landed on my personal radar in the mid-2010s around the time of their year-over-year EP releases in 2015 and 2016, and yet since then its been quite the wait for their album Escaping Eternity – out now via The Artisan Era.

Escaping Eternity puts the band in an interesting position. Their brand of neo-classical tech-death shred has become a specialty of their current record label and as a result has them standing side by side with quite a few cohorts. Like releases by many of their label-mates, Escaping Eternity is also a thickly packed album; with nearly seven years between releases The Devils Of Loudun have used what seems to be all of that time creating music – resulting in a ten-song release that pushes close to an hour’s worth of songs. Continue reading »

HATH – ALL THAT WAS PROMISED

 Album Reviews  2 Responses »
Feb 172022
 

(The highly-anticipated new album from Hath is scheduled for release on 04 March via Willowtip, and Andy Synn has the inside scoop on what you can expect from this rollercoaster of a record)

Hath‘s first album, Of Rot and Ruin, was one of the most hyped albums of 2019, to the extent that (if memory serves) a number of people were extremely keen to label it a “masterpiece” before they’d even heard it.

As much as I enjoyed the record, however, I couldn’t help noticing that much of the music was heavily indebted – a little too heavily indebted, if I’m going to be totally honest – to some of its more obvious influences and inspirations, especially the varied and viscous works of beloved UK Prog-Death duo Slugdge, something which most other reviews seemed to either massively downplay or totally disregard for fear of rocking the boat.

But despite the fact that I was, shall we say, somewhat more critical than most (though still, overall, pretty positive) about their debut, the band still actively reached out to us here at NCS asking if we’d be willing to give their new album a listen and share our honest opinion about it, whatever that might be.

Now, if nothing else, this tells me one of two things about Hath. Either they’re extremely confident about All That Was Promised… or they’re simply gluttons for punishment.

Let’s find out which, shall we?

Continue reading »

SHORT BUT SWEET: NAPALM DEATH — “RESENTMENT IS ALWAYS SEISMIC – A FINAL THROW OF THROES”

 Album Reviews, SHORT BUT SWEET  1 Response »
Feb 162022
 


photo by Gobinder Jhitta

 

(DGR wrote the following review of a new EP by Napalm Death that was released on February 11th by Century Media Records.)

Once again, I find myself at the altar of reviewing a Napalm Death release since it’s one of the things that has commanded much of my listening time. They’re good at hijacking my attention like that.

Considering the scramble that seems to be happening for bands to release ‘something, anything‘ in the last few years as touring continues to take a hit from the ongoing pandemic, EPs have become an increasingly bizarre proposition. They’ve always been fairly nebulous throughout the years, often a collecting pool for stuff that didn’t make an album after recording sessions or previews of whatever bundle of ideas might be currently rattling around in an artist’s head while they try to figure out where to take their project next.

Right now, EPs have expanded that nebulous sensibility to being these increasingly huge catch-alls of anything and everything – which can make for some incredibly all-over-the-map listening sessions thematically. In the case of Napalm Death‘s newest release, Resentment Is Always Seismic – A Final Throw Of Throes, that weird thematic sensibility is just a continuation of what the band have been doing over the past couple of decades, because outside of their obvious ‘pillar of grindcore’ status the band have always been willing to indulge an ambitious and strangely artistic side – so much so that they have added whole eras of ‘weird death metal’ to the hybrid of current industrial dirge and hardcore punk repeatedly beating the shit out of each other that the band currently love to play with when they’re not dishing out their usual genre staples. Continue reading »

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